Arthur C Clarke Visionary and Writer

Photo: Arthur C. Clarke at his home office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 28 March 2005

Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author,
inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in collaboration with
director Stanley Kubrick, a collaboration which also produced the film of the same name; and as a host and commentator in the British television
series Mysterious World.

Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor and technician from 1941-1946, proposed satellite communication systems in 1945
which won him the Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal in 1963. He was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from
1947-1950 and again in 1953. Later, he helped fight for the preservation of lowland gorillas.

Clarke emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956 largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving, and lived there until his death. He was knighted by
the British monarchy in 1998, and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.

Biography

Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England. As a boy he enjoyed stargazing and reading old American science fiction pulp magazines.
After secondary school and studying at Huish's Grammar School, Taunton, he was unable to afford a university education and got a job as
an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education.

During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defence
system, which contributed to the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on Ground
Controlled Approach (GCA) radar as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, his only non-science-fiction novel. Although GCA
did not see much practical use in the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949 after several years of development. Clarke
initially served in the ranks, and was a Corporal instructor on radar at No 9 Radio School, RAF Yatesbury. He was commissioned as a Pilot
Officer (Technical Branch) on 27 May 1943. He was promoted Flying Officer on 27 November 1943. He was appointed chief training instructor
at RAF Honiley and was demobilised with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After the war he earned a first-class degree in mathematics and
physics at King's College London.

In the postwar years, Clarke became the Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946-1947 and again from 1951-1953. Although
he was not the originator of the concept of geostationary satellites, one of his most important contributions may be his idea that they
would be ideal telecommunications relays. He advanced this idea in a paper privately circulated among the core technical members of the
BIS in 1945. The concept was published in Wireless World in October of that year. Clarke also wrote a number of non-fiction books
describing the technical details and societal implications of rocketry and space flight. The most notable of these may be The Exploration
of Space (1951) and The Promise of Space (1968). In recognition of these contributions the geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres (22,000 mi)
above the equator is officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union as a Clarke Orbit.

On a trip to Florida in 1953 Clarke met and quickly married Marilyn Mayfield, a 22-year-old American divorcee with a young son. They separated
permanently after six months, although the divorce was not finalised until 1964. "The marriage was incompatible from the beginning", says Clarke.
Clarke never remarried but was close to Leslie Ekanayake, who died in 1977. In his biography of Stanley Kubrick, John Baxter cites Clarke's
homosexuality as a reason why Clarke relocated, due to more tolerant laws in regards to homosexuality in Sri Lanka. Journalists who inquired of
Clarke whether he was gay were told, "No, merely mildly cheerful." However, Michael Moorcock has written:

"Everyone knew he was gay. In the 1950s I'd go out drinking with his boyfriend. We met his proteges, western and eastern, and their families:
people who had only the most generous praise for his kindness. Self-absorbed he might be, and a teetotaller, but an impeccable gent through
and through."

Moorcook's assertion is not supported by other reports, although in an interview in the July 1986 issue of Playboy magazine, Clarke stated
"Of course. Who hasn't?" when asked if he has had bisexual experiences.

Clarke also maintained a vast collection of manuscripts and personal memoirs, maintained by his brother Fred Clarke in Taunton, Somerset,
England, and referred to as the "Clarkives." Clarke has said that some of his private diaries will not be published until 30 years after
his death. When asked why they were sealed up, he answered "Well, there might be all sorts of embarrassing things in them".

Writing Career

While Clarke had a few stories published in fanzines, between 1937 and 1945, his first professional sales appeared in Astounding Science
Fiction in 1946: "Loophole" was published in April, while "Rescue Party", his first sale, was published in May. Along with his writing
Clarke briefly worked as Assistant Editor of Science Abstracts (1949) before devoting himself to writing full-time from 1951 onward. Clarke
also contributed to the Dan Dare series published in Eagle, and his first three published novels were written for children.

Clarke corresponded with C. S. Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s and they once met in an Oxford pub, The Eastgate, to discuss science fiction and
space travel. Clarke, after Lewis's death, voiced great praise for him, saying the Ransom Trilogy was one of the few works of science fiction
that could be considered literature.

In 1948 he wrote "The Sentinel" for a BBC competition. Though the story was rejected it changed the course of Clarke's career. Not only was it
the basis for A Space Odyssey, but "The Sentinel" also introduced a more mystical and cosmic element to Clarke's work. Many of Clarke's later
works feature a technologically advanced but still-prejudiced mankind being confronted by a superior alien intelligence. In the cases of The
City and the Stars (and its original version, Against the Fall of Night), Childhood's End, and the 2001 series, this encounter produces a
conceptual breakthrough that accelerates humanity into the next stage of its evolution. In Clarke's authorized biography, Neil McAleer writes
that: "many readers and critics still consider [Childhood's End] Arthur C. Clarke's best novel."

Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, having emigrated there when it was still called Ceylon, first in Unawatuna on the
south coast, and then in Colombo. Clarke held citizenship of both the UK and Sri Lanka. He was an avid scuba diver and a member of the
Underwater Explorers Club. Living in Sri Lanka afforded him the opportunity to visit the ocean year-round. It also inspired the locale for
his novel The Fountains of Paradise in which he described a space elevator. This, he believed, ultimately will be his legacy, more so than
geostationary satellites, once space elevators make rocket based access to space obsolete.

His many predictions culminated in 1958 when he began a series of essays in various magazines that eventually became Profiles of the Future
published in book form in 1962. A timetable up to the year 2100 describes inventions and ideas including such things as a "global library"
for 2005.

Later Years

In the early 1970s Clarke signed a three-book publishing deal, a record for a science-fiction writer at the time. The first of the three was
Rendezvous with Rama in 1973, which won him all the main genre awards and has spawned sequels that, along with the 2001 series, formed the
backbone of his later career.

In 1975 Clarke's short story "The Star" was not included in a new high school English textbook in Sri Lanka because of concerns that it might
offend Roman Catholics even though it had already been selected. The same textbook also caused controversy because it replaced Shakespeare's
work with that of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Isaac Asimov.

In the 1980s Clarke became well known to many for his television programmes Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World,
Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious
Universe. In 1986 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. In 1988 he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome,
having originally contracted polio in 1959, and needed to use a wheelchair most of the time thereafter. Sir Arthur C Clarke was for many years
a Vice Patron of the British Polio Fellowship.

In the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to British cultural
interests in Sri Lanka". The same year he became the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004 and he
also served as Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.

In 1994, Clarke appeared in a science fiction film; he portrayed himself in the telefilm Without Warning, an American production about an
apocalyptic alien first contact scenario presented in the form of a faux newscast.

On 26 May 2000 he was made a Knight Bachelor "for services to literature" at a ceremony in Colombo. The award of a knighthood had been announced
in the 1998 New Year Honours, but investiture with the award had been delayed, at Clarke's request, because of an accusation, by the British
tabloid The Sunday Mirror, of paedophilia. The charge was subsequently found to be baseless by the Sri Lankan police. According to The Daily
Telegraph (London), the Mirror subsequently published an apology, and Clarke chose not to sue for defamation. Clarke was then duly knighted.

Although he and his home were unharmed by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami, his "Arthur C. Clarke Diving School" at Hikkaduwa was
destroyed. He made humanitarian appeals, and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation worked towards a better disaster notification systems. The
school has since been rebuilt.

In September 2007, he provided a video greeting for NASA's Cassini probe's flyby of Iapetus (which plays an important role in 2001: A Space
Odyssey). In December 2007 on his 90th birthday, Clarke recorded a video message to his friends and fans bidding them good-bye.

Clarke died in Sri Lanka on 19 March 2008 after suffering from breathing problems, according to Rohan de Silva, one of his aides.

Only a few days before he died, he had reviewed the manuscript of his final work, The Last Theorem, on which he had collaborated by e-mail
with his contemporary Frederik Pohl. The book was published after Clarke's death.

Clarke was buried in Colombo in traditional Sri Lankan fashion on 22 March. His younger brother, Fred Clarke, and his Sri Lankan adoptive
family were among the thousands in attendance.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Clarke's first venture into film was the Stanley Kubrick directed 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick and Clarke had met in New York City in 1964
to discuss the possibility of a collaborative film project. As the idea developed, it was decided that the story for the film was to be loosely
based on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel", written in 1948 as an entry in a BBC short story competition. Originally, Clarke was going to
write the screenplay for the film, but Kubrick suggested during one of their brainstorming meetings that before beginning on the actual
script, they should let their imaginations soar free by writing a novel first, which the film would be based on upon its completion. "This
is more or less the way it worked out, though toward the end, novel and screenplay were being written simultaneously, with feedback in both
directions. Thus I rewrote some sections after seeing the movie rushes -- a rather expensive method of literary creation, which few other
authors can have enjoyed." The novel ended up being published a few months after the release of the movie.

Due to the hectic schedule of the film's production, Kubrick and Clarke had difficulty collaborating on the book. Clarke completed a draft of
the novel at the end of 1964 with the plan to publish in 1965 in advance of the film's release in 1966. After many delays the film was released
in the spring of 1968, before the book was completed. The book was credited to Clarke alone. Clarke later complained that this had the effect of
making the book into a novelisation, that Kubrick had manipulated circumstances to downplay Clarke's authorship. For these and other reasons, the
details of the story differ slightly from the book to the movie. The film contains little explanation for the events taking place. Clarke, on the
other hand, wrote thorough explanations of "cause and effect" for the events in the novel. James Randi later recounted that upon seeing 2001 for
the first time, Clarke left the movie theatre during the first break crying because he was so upset about how the movie had turned out. Despite
their differences, both film and novel were well received.

In 1972, Clarke published The Lost Worlds of 2001, which included his accounts of the production, and alternate versions, of key scenes. The
"special edition" of the novel A Space Odyssey (released in 1999) contains an introduction by Clarke in which he documents the events leading
to the release of the novel and film.

2010

In 1982 Clarke continued the 2001 epic with a sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two. This novel was also made into a film, 2010,
directed by Peter Hyams for release in 1984. Because of the political environment in America in the 1980s, the film presents a Cold War theme,
with the looming tensions of nuclear warfare not featured in the novel. The film was not considered to be as revolutionary or artistic as 2001,
but the reviews were still positive.

Clarke's email correspondence with Hyams was published in 1984. Titled The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010, and co-authored with Hyams, it
illustrates his fascination with the then-pioneering medium of email and its use for them to communicate on an almost daily basis at the time
of planning and production of the film while living on different continents. The book also includes Clarke's list of the best science-fiction
films ever made.

Clarke appeared in the film, first as the man feeding the pigeons while Dr. Heywood Floyd is engaged in a conversation in front of the White
House. Later, in the hospital scene with David Bowman's mother, an image of the cover of Time portrays Clarke as the American President and
Kubrick as the Russian Premier.